


The Strange, Somewhat Insufferable, Second Year School Life of Izumi Kousuke

by nyanja14



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 12:11:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyanja14/pseuds/nyanja14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Izumi was less than thrilled with his second year class assignment.</p><p>(a little abe/miha oneshot that actually has very little to do with Izumi, sorry)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Strange, Somewhat Insufferable, Second Year School Life of Izumi Kousuke

**Author's Note:**

> This is an oofuri secret santa gift for actualnagitokomaeda / komaedasenpai on tumblr. Happy Holidays, Victoria! I aimed more for the "cute and fluffy" end of your prompt range, but I don't know how well I succeeded. I hope you enjoy it regardless.
> 
> I blame this oneshot entirely on xxxHolic. I'm not sure how or why Izumi wound up narrating this thing, but when I started writing he was the one talking, so oh well.
> 
> I've never written for oofuri before, so this was a fun little experiment. The only eyeballs that saw this before posting were my own, so beware! Typos and errors no doubt proliferate below.

It was just his luck that Izumi was stuck in the same class with the three most annoying guys on the team for his second year. Abe, Mihashi, and Tajima all in the same room with no one normal to bear them with? Izumi would almost rather have none of his teammates in class with him.

Almost.

“Most annoying,” while true, was probably a bit harsh. They were all good guys and great teammates and Izumi liked hanging out with them outside of practice now and then. But being in class with them meant basically seeing them _all day_ and Izumi was only human.

They were just so _weird_. Tajima was always _on_ and raring to _go_ (where, Izumi wasn't sure) and he didn't seem to get that not everyone was a livewire of energy. Mihashi was a lot better than last year, but he was still a tangled mess of nerves and strange twitching. And Abe was nothing but baseball through and through and the small portion of his brain that wasn't entirely baseball was focused on keeping Mihashi in top condition. Izumi didn't know how Mihashi could stand having someone bugging him about how much he weighed each morning, but Mihashi seemed to like the attention. When Izumi tried to complain to Tajima about what a total control freak Abe was, Tajima just pointed out that it wasn’t as bad as last year and “Besides, isn’t it good for them?”

_Weird._

It promised to be a school year of eternal suffering. Izumi coped by texting Hamada whenever he could get away with pulling his phone out or just tuning the three of them out whenever he felt his blood pressure rising. It turned out that all of that meditation was good for things besides game stress.

So Izumi was imagining the way the field smelled early in the morning as he ate his lunch, only half listening to whatever Tajima was rattling on about. But when Mihashi of all people actually interrupted him, Izumi snapped back to the present.

“Abe… Abe-kun’s only eating b-bread?” Mihashi asked.

Sure enough, the bento Abe’s mother usually packed for him each day was missing and all Abe had in front of him was a sandwich from the school store. “My parents went to Hawaii for my aunt’s wedding,” Abe said around a large bite of food.

“Your parents went to _Hawaii_ and didn’t take you with?” Tajima exclaimed, hands slamming down on his desk. “What about your brother?”

Abe just shrugged one shoulder.

“So, what, you’re just going to order delivery or something until they come back?” Izumi asked.

“Something like that.”

“That actually sounds pretty awesome. Whatever you want!” Tajima grinned broadly at Mihashi. “We should go over to Abe’s, make him order us a pizza.”

Personally, Izumi thought it didn’t sound too great. Delivery was tasty as a treat, but eventually you started craving home-cooked food. “Why don’t you just cook your own food? You cooked all right at training camp last year.”

Abe pulled a face. “That was mostly Mihashi. You guys would’ve been eating a lot more crap without him telling me what to do.” Mihashi preened under the praise, though it was really more like a simple admission of fact. “Besides, planning meals and shopping and cleaning up and all is a pain. Delivery and sandwiches for a few days won’t kill me.”

Mihashi was staring at the remains of his bento, biting his bottom lip the same way he did when they took math tests. Wordlessly, he slid it over towards Abe, but Abe shoved it back at him. “Finish your food. How are you going to put on more muscle if you don’t eat right?” he growled. Mihashi sat up straight in his seat, starting and immediately aborting a few sentences before he finally started shoveling the rest of his lunch into his mouth.

Izumi sighed, propping his chin up on one hand. “Abe, aren’t you kind of a giant hypocrite?”

_“Huh?”_

* * *

 

The next day, Izumi’s school life suffering took on a new form as the other three guys went from weird to weirder.

Well, mostly it was Mihashi and Abe that got weirder.

Abe stood up to head to the school store and score a sandwich before things got too picked over and Mihashi practically yelped. “W-wait!”

Abe stopped, staring at Mihashi with his complete focus, like he was waiting for a pitch. Mihashi’s hands twisted in a formless gesture. “Hold. Hold on.” He bent over and dug out a second bento, sticking it on Abe’s desk. “H-here.”

Abe blinked very, very slowly. “Your mother made me lunch?”

Mihashi looked away, vibrating with one of his strange full-body shudders. “I… I did.”

“Mihashi, you made bento?” Tajima spoke so loudly that a few of their classmates looked over curiously. “Come on, open it up!”

Abe lifted off the lid and Izumi couldn’t help but murmur “ _Whoa_.” That wasn’t just lunch; it was a work of art. Izumi’s mother was a pretty good cook, but she sure had never made tamagoyaki so perfectly shaped or ikameshi that smelled that good. Mihashi fidgeted while the three of them gazed upon the bento. Izumi suddenly felt extremely ravenous. Tajima looked like he was tempted to start stealing food from Abe’s bento too. And Abe, he looked like he was torn between scolding Mihashi for wasting time cooking a masterpiece bento (never mind that it was the off-season) and… something. Whatever that “something” was must have won out because Abe swallowed and said, “It— it looks good. Thanks.”

Usually words like that would have Mihashi flushed pink with pleasure and _ehehehe_ -ing to himself, but not today. Mihashi’s head jerked in something that was probably supposed to be a nod. He sat down at his desk stiffly, opening his own bento to start eating. Mihashi’s lunch, Izumi noticed, looked the same as ever, a simple affair put together by a busy mother.

“‘Good?!’” Tajima repeated, sounding scandalized. “It looks super good! _Extremely_ good! Mihashi, how do you even _make_ ikameshi?”

Mihashi’s mouth was full of onigiri, but it sounded like he said something like, “It’s not that hard.”

“ _Really?_ ”

Izumi ignored Tajima’s squawking in favor of examining Abe, who was apparently still too floored to eat. Izumi could kind of empathize. His mother hadn’t made him a bento that nice since he was a little kid in elementary school, too young to be embarrassed by the cutesy foods she liked to attempt. One time, in his last year of middle school, a kouhai girl had made Izumi a bento. It wasn’t nearly as good as Mihashi’s though.

Izumi wondered if anyone had ever had a crush on Abe and made him a bento. He kind of doubted it. Unless—

Izumi peered suspiciously at Mihashi, who had loosened up a little thanks to Tajima’s antics, laughing at something he’d said.

Did it still count if a _guy_ made you a bento?

Thinking about it gave Izumi a bit of a headache, so he decided to just forget about it.

* * *

 

Easier said than done because the parade of flawless bento continued on. Somehow (Izumi blamed Tajima’s big mouth) word of Mihashi’s spectacular bento had spread throughout the classroom and so each day a crowd would gather around their desks at lunchtime to catch a peek when the latest bento was revealed. Really, it was ridiculous. (Though one day Mihashi had brought in some hana zushi that was truly too pretty to eat. Izumi actually mourned a little when it vanished into Abe’s mouth.)

Whatever trepidation Mihashi had felt the first day was gone and now he presented the bento to Abe with a glow of pride emanating from him, face beaming as Abe accepted and ate them. Tajima moaned loudly every lunch about Abe’s staunch refusal to share and Izumi—

Izumi was becoming more and more convinced that _something_ was going on with Nishiura’s battery.

Making bento especially for someone… that was a thing that mothers or wives or girlfriends did. Izumi supposed that there was no rule saying that a guy couldn’t make another guy bento, but… it was kind of weird. Mihashi had to realize what it looked like.

Then again, Mihashi was pretty odd, not to mention oblivious. Maybe he didn’t realize what kind of message he was sending.

Abe, though… he was getting the message, whether Mihashi intended it or not. As Mihashi’s confidence grew each lunch, Abe became more and more flustered. He’d take the bento each day, mumbling “Thank you,” and shuffling awkwardly in the face of Mihashi’s bright smile, then eat the lunch slowly with the sort of reverence he usually only afforded to his catcher’s mitt maintenance. Izumi wished that he would stop being so embarrassing about it because just watching him was making Izumi feel embarrassed.

Despite how flustered Abe got every lunch, he also seemed _pleased_ in an Abe-ish sort of way. Maybe he was just glad to not be stuck eating mediocre sandwiches all week, but…

“Do you think Abe likes Mihashi?” Izumi asked Tajima. They were alone, lugging materials to the science lab for a teacher and the question had been bugging Izumi for days now. “I mean, you know, _likes_ him.”

  
“Yeah,” Tajima answered immediately, utterly unconcerned. Then again, Tajima was fully capable of brazenly discussing porn aloud, so Izumi doubted any topic could faze him. “Why wouldn’t he? Mihashi’s awesome.”

Tajima made it sound so simple. Then again, Izumi supposed that it really could be just that simple and that he was the one making it all complicated in his head.

“What about Mihashi? You think he likes him back?”

Tajima just grinned.

* * *

 

The lunch situation had gotten so… domestic, that Izumi had nearly forgotten the reason behind it, so when Abe said “My parents are coming back from Hawaii tonight, so don’t make me lunch tomorrow,” halfway through eating his (gorgeous) bento, Izumi was a bit surprised, though he sure handled it better than Mihashi. Izumi didn't know why (maybe it sounded like scolding to him?) but Mihashi _froze_ , so still for a moment that he couldn’t have been breathing, then he started squirming in his seat, looking around everywhere like he desperately needed the exit but couldn’t remember where it was. Tajima shot Abe a frosty glare that made Izumi’s mouth dry out, but Abe was already working on damage control.

He grabbed Mihashi’s arm, holding on to it so that he couldn’t actually escape and practically shouted, “Thanks for the bento.” The entire class was watching now and Izumi kind of wanted to sink beneath his desk and disappear, but at least Mihashi didn’t look like a rabbit about to bolt anymore. Abe lowered his voice, fumbling through the rest of his not-quite-an-apology. “You… they were _really_ nice and they looked like they must take a long time to make… you didn’t have to do all that...

Mihashi stilled, not with the unnatural stiffness that preceded his flight-or-yeah-definitely-flight response, but with the sort of calm that Izumi had never glimpsed in him outside of rare moments in games. “But… Abe-kun is a-always… take, taking care of me, so… I wanted to…”

  
Izumi didn’t know that Abe could blush that red. He got the distinct impression that they should leave the two of them alone and fortunately he and Tajima seemed to be on the same wave length for once because Tajima jumped out of his seat and babbled some sort of explanation that Izumi doubted either Abe or Mihashi heard a single word of. Abe and Mihashi were still wrapped up in their own little bubble as Tajima fled the room with Izumi on his heels.

It wasn’t until they were out in the hallway that Izumi realized they’d both left their lunches in the classroom. Izumi looked back at the room, stomach grumbling with something that was either hunger or regret. It’d easily be worth it though if this all somehow resulted in Abe and Mihashi being a little less annoying and weird.

Tajima clapped him on the shoulder. “Want to go see if there’s anything good left at the school store?”


End file.
